Katherine Brady (from left) is Vanessa, Sishel Claverie is Daniela, Rána Roman is Nina and Rachel Marie LaPorte is Carla in Skylight Music Theatre’s production of “In the Heights.”

In the Act 1 finale for "In the Heights" — which opened Friday night at Skylight Music Theatre, under the direction of Ragnar Conde (stage) and Jeff Schaetzke (music) — a nighttime power blackout sends a careening Washington Heights barrio toward the brink.

It's the beginning of the Fourth of July weekend, but freedom and independence seem further than ever for the barrio's residents, each of whose All-American dreams have curdled faster than the soured milk in the local bodega — where the refrigerator is on the fritz and the owner is in a funk.

But even as the inevitable looting begins, we see tiny pinpricks of light, emanating from various characters' cellphones. They're soon joined by early Fourth of July fireworks that briefly take back the night (outstanding lighting design by Holly Blomquist). It's the flickering promise of a new dawn, in which this community might pick up and mend its strewn and broken dreams — as long as they stick together.

During large chunks of "Heights," that community is divided and distracted by individual dramas, most of them overheated soap operas that don't get the room they need to unfold (underwhelming book by Quiara Alegría Hudes). That tempts a few members of this cast to give fraught, overcooked performances in a search for more depth than their characters actually have.

None of which ultimately matters, because on a deeper level — down beneath the clumsily contrived details — the dilemma confronting every one of this barrio's residents rings true. Each of them is in perpetual exile, caught between a nostalgic longing for Caribbean islands they no longer know and their small piece of a long-inhabited New York island that can still feel foreign.

One can therefore tune out the underdone plot points in the story of 19-year-old Nina — an appealing Rána Roman, mismatched here with the often flat Reuben Echoles, as Nina's boyfriend — and focus instead on Roman's poignantly sung heartache, as she wistfully recalls those carefree days when she felt that New York was hers and that she belonged.

Similarly, one can hear and see the melancholy in Tommy Rivera-Vega's textured portrait of Usnavi, a troubadour whose funny clowning and energetic rapping never quite hide his deep-seated feelings: for his dead parents, for the woman who then raised him (an excellent Christina Aranda) and for the charismatic Vanessa, who can reduce him to tongue-tied mush.

And not just him, either. Katherine Brady's Vanessa is a galvanic powerhouse — never more than when she sings about being powerless, underscoring the disconnect between her big dreams and shrinking options.

Like this entire cast, Brady also can dance like nobody's business. Claudia Sol Morgan's choreography is both beautiful and intoxicating, while doing full justice to Lin-Manuel Miranda's score — a deliriously tangled mash-up of salsa, rap and Broadway, from Cole Porter to "Rent."

It's through the dancing this community does together that it fully sings — and realizes — each individual's seemingly quixotic search for that illusive place called home.

How appropriate, then, that one of the most colorful and exuberant dance numbers in "Heights" is titled "Carnaval del Barrio" — true to the celebratory nature of this show, which ultimately suggests that home may actually be just around the corner.

IF YOU GO

"In the Heights" continues through Feb. 23 at the Cabot Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. For tickets, call (414) 291-7800 or go to skylightmusictheatre.org.

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Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.

E-mail Newsletter

Keep up with the art scene and trends in urban design with art and architecture critic Mary Louise Schumacher. Every week, you'll get the latest reviews, musings on architecture and her picks for what to do on the weekends.